E-Tongue: Health and Safety Monitoring

The Electronic Tongue was invented for food safety applications and environmental monitoring. It is used to detect heavy metals and other inorganic contaminants in water. The founder of this innovative technology is Pradeep Kurup from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UMass Lowell. This technology is faster, more cost effective, less invasive and easier to use when compared with traditional, current methods. In addition, this technology is part of a multi-billion dollar market and has significant commercialization potential in environmental sensing and monitoring, food industry, homeland security, medical diagnostics, pharmaceuticals, agriculture, biotechnology and personal care.

The global environmental sensor and monitoring market alone has been valued at $11.1 billion in 2010 and is expected to reach $15.3 billion by 2016.